Lucy Gunn Allen

Lucy Gunn Allen Cox, 1840 - 1928, age 88. Lucy was born in Yelrome (destroyed community), Hancock, Illinois. Lucy endured hardships of early Saints; walked behind the wagon as a child; arrived in Utah (1848); helped settle Manti (1849); lived inside the hill where the Manti Temple now stands for a year or more; much Indian trouble; 1st wife; married by Brigham Young; faithful; a Church teacher for 40 years; hard worker; wove cloth; knitted stockings; made soap and tallow candles; enjoyed quilting, wool picking, spinning, and apple paring bees; died from liver cancer; 12 children; adored by her family. Lucy's parents went to winter quarters in 1846. In the early spring of 1847 they started across the plains. In crossing the plains her father had one wagon and one yoke of oxen, their names were Buck and Dick. They brought all their bedding, clothes and provision for one year. They had to walk most of the way on account of the teams being tired and the roads rough and heavy. When going up hills her mother and the children would walk behind the wagon and block the back wheels by placing rocks behind them, throwing them out when the team started so as to make the road smoother for the following teams. Each night they would form a circle of wagons with an opening at each end for convenience to drive the stock in, in-case any prowling Indians tried to drive the stock off, or buffalo to cause a stampede. The wagon tongues were all on the outside and the fires were built there too; where they cooked their supper and breakfast. In many instances they used buffalo chips instead of wood, which was very scarce in some places. After dinner they would gather in the enclosure and have sacred meetings, singing, and dancing. In some places they would encounter buffalo that were very wild and dangerous if excited. In danger of there being a stampede the teams were all unhitched from the wagons so if the oxen ran they would not take the wagons with them. They arrived in Utah in the fall of 1849 in Heber C. Kimball's Company and located in Sessions settlement, now Bountiful. They moved to Salt Lake City for one summer and then went to Manti in the fall of 1849, when Brigham Young called for a company of Latter-day Saints to settle the Sanpitch Valley. Under the leadership of her grandfather, Isaac Morley, with about 50 families and 150 miles journey lasting one month, they made new roads the entire distance. It was in the month of November and the weather was very cold and the ground was covered in snow. They drove their teams on the south side of the quarry hill where the Manti temple now stands and dug holes in the side of the hill for homes. As soon as possible a stone fort was built, which gave them protection from the Indians who prevented them from building their homes on city lots. After their homes were built they had to move back to the fort two different times on account of Indians. The first schoolhouse was built while they still lived under the quarry; it was one big log room with a fireplace and a door in the east end and log benches for seats. Their books were the Bible, Book of Mormon, and whatever books they brought with them. The games they played were ball, ring-around-a-rosy, and orange and lemon. Their dances were French four, reels, and quadrilles, the waltz was not known at that time. Their music was the fiddle and the banjo. In 1853 they moved north to Santiquin. Lucy went to visit relatives in Manti and renewed her acquaintance with Frederick W. Cox Jr. One evening they were going from her sister Mary's to the little fort to visit her Aunt Cordelia, and as they came to the bridge across the city creek they met two men, Warren S. Snow (the Bishop) and Edwin Whiting. Warren said, "Fred, don't you want to get married?" He said, "Yes." Lucy said, "no," but not seriously thinking the ceremony was performed on the 27th of February, 1857. They went on to Aunt Cordelia's and in talking it over they told them it was legal. They would have much rather had her Grandfather Isaac Morley tie the knot, had they any idea of Warren's selfish motives. (Frederick kept company with the girl Warren wanted and later married.) After sitting up the whole night, Lucy left the next morning for her home in Santaquin with her grandfather Morley. Within a couple of months Frederick and Warren came along and took her with them to Salt Lake where President Brigham Young married them on April 20, 1857, because they both thought the first was of no avail as far as they were concerned. (Warren marrying two girls the same day, one of them being the girl Frederick had taken out and Warren being jealous of.) They returned to Manti and made it their permanent home, living in the fort a few years and later built a comfortable home out on a city lot, where they lived and raised their family of 12 children. Lucy was busy spinning and weaving to make cloth for their clothes and yarn for their socks. The Indians were very troublesome and hostile and continually begging for food. They hardly dared to refuse them, notwithstanding President Young counseled that it was better to feed them than to fight them. It was hard to divide their short rations with them. Crickets came and devoured every green thing; they tried to destroy them by gathering them in sacks and burning them. Then a few years later the grasshoppers came and they had to kill them by spreading brush and straw over the ground and burning it. Because Polygamy was in vogue Frederick was willing to accept the teachings and for 16 years sported around with different girls, much to Lucy's displeasure. He married Alvira Coolidge, which resulted in the division of their home, as his time and interest was centered there. Of course he provided food and clothing, but Lucy did not feel he provided the other necessities to make a happy and complete home. It was a very uncommon thing for him to spend a holiday or an evening at home. He was very high tempered and it was almost impossible to please him. The children acted shy and frightened when he was around. Women's work in those days was washing, picking over and spinning wool into yarn for cloth, making soap with salderadus and lime instead of lye. The homes were lighted by a pine knot in the fireplace, until years later when tallow was used to make candles by dipping a wick several times in it. Salt was refined by dissolving the rock or red salt, letting it settle until perfectly clear, and then boiling it away, then it was spread in the sun to dry. After a big storm had dried, the southern bottomlands would look white as snow, out in what was called the saluratus beds. The storm would dissolve the alkali in the beds and bring it to the surface; they would scrape it into piles and gather it into sacks. It was used for soda biscuits, soap, and it was a cleaning agent for everything and everybody. The women also socialized at quilting bees, spinning bees, wool picking bees, and apple paring bees. Lucy was promised in her Patriarchal blessing, given by her Grandfather Morley, that she would have a numerous posterity. In 1917 a pension was granted to the Indian war veterans and from September1918 Frederick received it until his death and then the government transferred it to Lucy for her entire life. Bio provided by Ted Cox, great, great grandson.